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How long for a VERY casual old gamer to level a new toon to 80?


Eyesadi.1524

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Again, been away for a LONG time, but suddenly have developed a bit of a craving to return.

Now, of course, I have forgotten most EVERYTHING so it occurs to me to, perhaps, to start anew?

I AM an die hard MMO'er and have played ALL of the majors.  Where leveling used to be a lifetime job, most games have shortened the curve tremendously.

 

Sooo......how long to start a new toon and get it to 80 please???  Best guesstimate, of course.

 

And while we are on that topic, class suggestions to ease that journey?

 

Thanks all for the wisdom buff!

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Well, it's not that easy to say timewise. Cause there are a lot of different options.

 

There are item's ingame that will take you to 80 in a hiccup, but that also means losing out on learning your char. And there are a lot more setbacks to that, like trying an expansion like HoT right of the bat. 

Not saying there is anything wrong with leveling fast but it will become hard. Skipping a level every now and then (with a writ or something) could help out in a bind. 

But I thing that if you just start playing you will soon see how the leveling works. You can then always ajust.

 

As far as class, not going into that because I think all have their own ups and downs. 

 

This is just my opinion and I have myself made the go to 80 in a second backsplash after returning.

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For an upper estimate it took me 134 hours and 39 minutes to get my thief to level 80, purely through open world map completion and story and with time spent sorting out the bank, chatting etc. but no significant periods just going afk. It's certainly possible to do it a lot quicker than that even for a casual player. Getting XP isn't difficult and actually playing - completing events, doing the story etc is actually better than simply grinding in this game so you won't be peanalised if you don't want to power level.
 

1 hour ago, Eyesadi.1524 said:

I AM an die hard MMO'er and have played ALL of the majors.

In that case my main advice is treat GW2 like a brand new game you know nothing about, not just the next MMO. It's different to most others in a lot of subtle but important ways and I've known a lot of people who made things needlessly difficult for themselves because they were trying to play GW2 like their last MMO or like they think all MMOs must be. For example trying to find grind spots to level up, or wasting time trying to get exotic equipment from dungeons because they assumed it must be better than what you can craft or get from normal drops.
 

1 hour ago, Eyesadi.1524 said:

And while we are on that topic, class suggestions to ease that journey?

Pick one you enjoy playing. There's no significant difference between the time required to level the different professions and they're all useful at level 80 but there's absolutely no point spending your time levelling a character you can't wait to stop playing and switch to something else just because someone else told you it's easy.

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I shoulda added, I'm in no way interested in a speed run to 80.  Not at my age, nor my game style.  

I just recall back in EQ1 where it took us a month to go from 29 to 30..........and then we died and went back to 29!

Times have surely changed and I WAS hoping to make relatively quick progress.  I have another problem, you see.....

It's call ALTITIS!  I will need SEVERAL toons and the new specs have me all a twitter.

 

THX again folks!

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If you have old characters on your account, check their mail for birthday presents. Up to 6th birthday each present contains a leveling scroll that allows you to level an alt character to a specific level, from lvl 20 for 1st and 2nd birthday, up to lvl 60 for 6th birthday. As one person afflicted with altitis to another, I can tell you that these really make the process of leveling alts much more enjoyable 😉 .

 

On the same note, think twice (or better yet 20 times) before deleting old characters. If you like playing different characters, it's often a better idea to just retire them quietly and buy a new character slot. Surprisingly enough, most of my 20 odd characters get to see the light of Tyria again sporadically. Since max level and equipment are moderately easy to get in this game (compared to others) and don't get outdated, they usually are still relevant and ready to dive into new content even if I've shelved them for months or years.

 

If you like story gameplay, the personal story will give you experience roughly 2 levels worth every 10 character levels. Exploring the world also gives significant amounts of experience, so if you just go out, play the story, and see the sights, you'll have a decent part of the leveling experience covered. Jump into events you find on the way, harvest any nodes you come across, maybe do some crafting ... all of this will give you leveling experience. Leveling really is a side activity in this game and comes automatically with exploring the world.

 

Above all: have fun! Doing whatever you enjoy most really is the most effective way to level (except maybe if trash-talking on map chat is your activity of choice 😉 ), since leveling will just be a side effect of having a good time 🙂 .

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19 hours ago, Eyesadi.1524 said:

Again, been away for a LONG time, but suddenly have developed a bit of a craving to return.

Now, of course, I have forgotten most EVERYTHING so it occurs to me to, perhaps, to start anew?

I AM an die hard MMO'er and have played ALL of the majors.  Where leveling used to be a lifetime job, most games have shortened the curve tremendously.

 

Sooo......how long to start a new toon and get it to 80 please???  Best guesstimate, of course.

 

And while we are on that topic, class suggestions to ease that journey?

 

Thanks all for the wisdom buff!

As someone who have play way to much hour on MMORPG (lineage 2 1st hour wink wink) and get bored of it few year ago I was glad to get a 80 boost when I buy this game !
Some people will said that you cannot be good if you use it, but c'mon, this game isn't difficult, you'll get used to the combat pretty fast. Took me less than one week of casual playing to solo every hot & pof champ + some leg.

So, If you don't mind paying for it (if you don't have it) or buying hot&pof or eod chapter, you'll have 1-2 boost to skip that and directly having fun exploring the game (that what I find amazing here, all the thing hidden around and all those boss fight + group event ^^)

I can't tell how much time it took to level up a char in the normal way cuz I never did it here, not enough will for that since few years !

Have fun and welcome back ! 

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Leveling to 80 is like an extended tutorial paired with a good story. No matter if it takes someone a day, a week or a month, there will be SO much more content still to do after reaching 80 that it does not really matter. I have years of gameplay and have not completed everything yet.

This is NOT a game where the actual fun only starts when you reach "end level".

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I recently completed a levelling run of a charatcer for content for my channel. The rules were (roughly) not to use too many perks I had as a veteran and still hit the cap in a decent amount of time.  So no mounts,no tweaking my toon with gold, no accessing my bank ect.
During the run I balanced Levelling (killing ambient mobs in dead map areas for the xp bonus) and map completing.

The entire run took me about 16.5 hours of active play time. I avoided the story past level 20 and just "grinded" it out. This meant 5 Map completes and a journey to Orr following event chains, and killing ambient mobs. It also meant knowing where those dead pockets were to "exploit" and making sure I was using XP consumables at all times.
If one were not pushing hard to level and getting sidetracked by things like the Story, socializing ect I have to think 30 Hours is a very comfortable margin for getting to the cap.
Here is a playlist of the experiment, if you are interested.

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I continue to be AMAZED and GRATEFUL to this community.  As I mentioned earlier, i have played most all of the major MMO's, and a whole lot of the not so major.  I love the genre!  With, perhaps, only LOTRO as a distant second at best, you folks really are just NICE.  Tip of the hat to Mind........wonderful response!  

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If you already have an established account, your existing characters will have received a bunch of birthday gifts that include free level-up scrolls. (Also really good dyes, for your fashion needs!)

A *lot* of free level-up scrolls, in fact.

You may find a good way to level is to play a few levels to get the hang of the basics, eat a scroll that puts you around level 30-50, play a bunch more, and then get to 80 (possibly with any Tomes of Knowledge you have lying around to grease the skids a bit) — basically just take your free level-ups any time you're feeling like "yeah yeah, I get this, what's the next thing to learn?"

Note that level 80 characters can still have fun doing lower-level zone exploration, thanks to the game's downscaling mechanics; you'll just be faster than a low-level character.

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